


Horizon RWBY Dawn

by Dragondeathdrop



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game), RWBY
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds, Roleswap, Volume 6 (RWBY)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27132449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragondeathdrop/pseuds/Dragondeathdrop
Summary: Ruby Rose- A Huntress from a dying world.Aloy- A Seeker from a world renewed.One has lived her entire life alone, relying only on herself. She sought answers to her past, one that led her to the Old Ones and their last days. She swore to stop the rising darkness.One has lived her life wanting to help others, to be a hero like those in fairy tales. Young but capable she learned much but still has a lot left.Relics and Rebirth tie them together and they soon realize their long journeys have taken unexpected turns to unfamiliar Horizons and new Dawns.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna & Ruby Rose, Blake Belladonna & Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna & Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue

Aloy dismounted the Strider she had ridden on to get here. She had stopped HADES and HEPHAESTUS from causing more extinction events and after a brief stay at Meridian, the capital city of the Carja, she heard rumors that an influx of Rockbreakers and Tramplers had overrun Plainsong, home of the Utaru tribe.

Erend had suggested that she ask High Matriarch Teersa about Plainsong on her return home so Aloy that done just that. Teersa didn’t know much since the Utaru were so far away but said the land was flat. Aloy restocked what supplies she could and set off on her overridden horse like Strider.

As it would take days to get there, she used the time to go over what she knew as she set up her temporary camps. Even now, after everything that she had done and seen it was still a bit unbelievable to her.

As she rode, she listened to the diary files that she had made on her Focus the last time she visited Meridian. The Focus that had been on her ear since she was a child was a piece of Old One technology. She had made over thirty such files since HADES was defeated mostly because she was alone now but also… also in case, something happened to her.

She knew that the Focus allowed her to see things others couldn’t like the path a machine would take before it started, marking enemies so she knew how many there were before she snuck into a bandit camp and what she used it most for, scanning datafiles and interacting with the world in a way that others simply couldn’t. It was the one real piece of “jewelry” that she allowed herself other than the necklace that had once belonged to Rost’s daughter.

Ted Faro reached out to his old friend Elisabet Sobeck regarding a glitch in one of his corporation’s lines of peacekeeping robots, named Chariots, wouldn’t obey stand down orders and had gone rogue on October 31st, 2064. A day later Elisabet delivers the news that due to the swarm’s sentience and the convertors that allowed them to consume biomass the Earth would be bare in fifteen months. Two days later, Zero Dawn and Operation Enduring Victory were greenlit.

July 15th, 2065: The colony ship named Odyssey exploded upon leaving the solar system.

By November of that year, the atmosphere was so toxic that environmental suits were required for travel and civilians live in sealed shelters.

January 15th, 2066: Operation Enduring Victory collapses but buys Zero Dawn enough time to be successful.

Later that day the main facility reported a malfunction leaving a gap of ten millimeters in the port seals which was enough for an energy signature to bleed through and to let the swarm discover the facility, enough to let them destroy Zero Dawn. Elisabet Sobeck sealed the facility… from the outside.

3021: A child is discovered inside of a Nora Holy site and given to an outcast to raise as his daughter… Her story began there.

After days of traveling, she made it to Plainsong and began her search. Eventually, the red-headed Nora brave found what she was looking for.

She had figured that DEMETER was buried underneath the ground and she would have been glad to be right except for the fact that she was currently overlooking a gigantic sinkhole. “Well, at least it’s not a volcano,” Aloy muttered to herself as she activated her Focus.

“Rubble in a doorway looks like a way around. Need to be careful descending.” Aloy took a running leap and dove into the hole. As she fell, she twisted and threw her grappling hook into the ground.

The rope tightened and Aloy made it safely to the ground. “Now, let’s see what we’re working with here.” She traveled through the Old One ruins and didn’t see anything more dangerous than a couple of scurrying rats.

Which was a relief after having had firefights with Eclipse members in a ruin similar to this under Sunfall, capital of the Shadow Carja. She had to squeeze through a couple of small passages that she wasn’t a fan of but whatever allowed her to get closer to her objective.

When she got through the last passage Aloy gasped. “Wow, Here I thought that the volcano from Firebreak was impressive… but this…. This is magnificent.”

She was on a ledge overlooking a MASSIVE, underground, overgrown city. The main cavern that Aloy was in had skyscrapers that spanned the entire length of the cavern. It looked like the city used to be lived in… before the machines… before the Faro Plague swept over the world and rendered the surface uninhabitable. They must have eventually run out of food… Aloy felt bad for them because they survived a swarm of robots but succumbed to starvation.

As she rappelled down into the Dead City, she felt a shiver shoot down her spine. Something about this place made her uneasy which was peculiar because she had explored ancient ruins before… although usually, she had Sylens in her ear and she didn’t this time.

“Best get this done quickly… Hopefully, DEMETER isn’t hostile like HADES and HEPHAESTUS.” She muttered to herself as she started walking.

After… walking who knows how long Aloy came to a familiar-looking door so she stepped up to it. “Hold for Identiscan.” The door said in the same synthetic, monotone voice that the one that guarded GAIA had.

“Alpha Registry recognized. Genetic identity confirmed. Entry Authorized. Greetings, Doctor Sobeck. You are cleared to proceed.”

Once the door was completely open, Aloy walked through and saw a facility that was very reminiscent of the FIREBREAK facility. But while FIREBREAK was inside of a volcano and had all the traits associated with it this was more… green. What Aloy saw reminded her of The Jewel, the jungle south of Meridian, there was plant life everywhere. Thick plant growth covered nearly every surface, the walls, the ceiling, the windows, and the floor.

There was still a part of her that couldn’t believe that this entire journey had started with something as simple as The Proving. She had been born an outcast, a motherless girl in a fiercely matriarchal society she was found inside All-Mother Mountain, which was the most sacred holy site within the Nora’s beliefs.

She had been raised by a fellow outcast named Rost, who taught her everything. He had taught her to fight the machines that they shared their world with, to scavenge off of dead animals and said machines, to craft arrowheads, tripwires, and more, and most importantly to survive.

He had lost his wife and daughter to raiders before setting off on a suicidal mission to get revenge, he hadn’t expected to survive but he had.

After a yearlong quest he had stumbled back to Nora lands bloody and nearly dead, according to tradition, he should have died where he rested but he was saved.  
Years later, he had saved her from being left out in the cold. He trained her for a singular purpose. Win the Proving, become a brave of the tribe, and get answers about her mother.

But her quest for knowledge about her mother had cost her the only family she had ever known. Rost had saved her from a madman named Helis and sacrificed himself to ensure that she didn’t die in the explosion that followed their fight with the crazed general.

She still had the shallow scar from Helis’ knife on her neck, and it had burned whenever she got near him, whether it was just her imagination or not she didn’t know, at least until he had been killed by her hand during the Battle of Meridian. A battle to prevent HADES from unleashing waves of FARO robots.

She had learned about her mother, who she was, and her role in saving the world. Elisabet Sobeck, the genius behind the project known as Zero Dawn, she had organized the smartest of the Old Ones in a feat of engineering that was unheard of to Aloy’s mind.

When the FARO plague was set to wipe the world out by stripping the biomass to use as fuel and their creator, a man named Ted Faro, couldn’t shut them down he had begged Elisabet for help.

Using her genius and his unlimited bankroll, she had gotten the best of the best of scientists, engineers, biologists, programmers, and countless others in an insane gamble to create GAIA. A hyper-intelligent, sentient AI whose purpose was singular; to restore Earth to life after the FARO robots wiped it out.

GAIA couldn’t do such an extreme task alone though; HADES and HEPHAESTUS were two of the nine subordinate functions that were created to help GAIA in her mission.

HEPHAESTUS was in charge of creating all kinds of machines for any purpose that GAIA needed them. Machines of land, sea, and sky were created in Cauldrons, which were able to create any such machine that was needed for any purpose.

However, much like the rest of the subordinate functions, HEPHAESTUS received an unknown signal and became a fully, sentient, and sadly hostile AI.

It had taken over a volcano in “Yellowstone” as its base of operations and had been cranking out Hunter-Killers. Hostile, feral machines designed to kill the tribes.

HADES meanwhile was… interesting. The AI was designed as a kind of reset button for GAIA in case she didn’t get it right. HADES was only designed to be a last resort; in case the Earth wasn’t hospitable. HADES was the cause of Aloy’s journey, though she didn’t know that until a lot later. The hostile AI believed that Elisabet Sobeck was a threat, so it had ordered its followers, Helis included, to eliminate Aloy.

But GAIA had a plan of its own. Since GAIA self-destructed in an attempt to stop her subordinate functions from getting free, she implemented a failsafe, a plan to stop HADES without actually being able to do anything herself due to her mandates.

She took Elisabet’s DNA and created a genetic clone. A baby that would be raised to adulthood by the tribe outside, and who could one day use the Alpha Registry that was coded into the functions to rebuild GAIA.

A daughter of Elisabet Sobeck, A hail Mary plan to avoid a second apocalypse. Aloy had been momentarily shattered by the revelation of what, of who she was.  
She then realized that she would be continuing the legacy that GAIA and Elisabet left behind and sacrificed everything for, she owed it to them both to finish their mission, they had given her an enormous undertaking.

But she would see it through to the end. She'd rebuild GAIA, no matter how long it took. It was her world now, and she wouldn't, no, she couldn't fail them, or their sacrifices would be in vain.

She spied a ray of light far above her on the roof of a building and some ledges nearby, so she made her way over to them and started to climb.

She expertly maneuvered her way up to her destination and easily made her way up onto the ceiling with a roll. She thought back to her lessons with Rost and he had taught her how to gauge the sunlight.

She knew it was almost midday by the time she had left the settlement that she had been stayed in so she figured that it was probably close to nightfall.

Once she made it back down to the ground, she began to prepare her the fire so that she could cook the meat that she’d have with picked berries. She made sure that the embers couldn’t leap onto the grass that she was sitting on before she turned her attention to the text files that she had collected in her exploration.

As she moved through the Dead City, she scanned thirty different data files with her Focus. Most of them were audio and holographic files so she decided to save those for dinner and afterward so she could do other things as she winded down for the night.

From the text data files alone she learned that the city had been a black site for some of Faro’s more… experimental projects and that while it had been disclosed to Elisabet and Zero Dawn when the project started Faro also told the FAS staff that while some would work on Zero Dawn most were to continue working on the project that he assigned them.

None of the text files disclosed what project he was talking about so Aloy stopped reading them and chose to focus on eating her dinner. For the time being. When she was done eating the squirrel meat that she had cooked she started listening to the first of the audio files. 

What she heard was certainly interesting, while some of the audio and holographic files were more informational than others, she learned about the project that the scientists and engineers here were working on. 

When the FARO plague was made public the two main alternatives that were proposed were Zero Dawn and the Odyssey project.

The Odyssey Project was originally a “multinational” attempt at a colony ship before it had become a corporate venture. By the time the FARO plague incident reached critical mass and Zero Dawn was being worked on the colony ship launched. Unfortunately, it exploded once it left the Solar System and was lost. The loss of the Odyssey left Zero Dawn as the only viable alternative.

But if what Aloy was listening to was correct Ted Faro had ordered the team here to work on Project REBIRTH. A project to see if there was a way to go to another world without the need for a colony ship.

Aloy thought it sounded insane but so did creating a highly intelligent AI that would remake life after the world died so she supposed that it was entirely possible. She was a rational person but she had learned when she first started unraveling the mystery behind her birth that her definition of rational needed to be expanded upon.

But the mystery of project REBIRTH could wait a few more hours for her. Once all the files had been listened to, she removed her Focus from her ear and set it next to where she had put her boar skin bedroll along with her weapons. Slowly, she drifted off to sleep, her thoughts on what she had learned.

She wasn’t sure how long she slept but she felt rested. She had been a light sleeper since she had set out on her journey and had reluctantly learned to operate on little sleep. Thankfully, this was not one of those times.

Once she had eaten and her bedroll put away, she set off deeper into the city. Her bow and spear were on her back, her tripcaster on her left hip, and her sling on her right. She didn’t see anything unusual on her journey aside from a scattered handful of data logs.

Well, that was until she came to the barely open door. Aloy had just barely enough room to fit through it before it creaked softly and slammed shut behind her. “Not returning that way.” She muttered to nobody but herself and the ghosts of the past.

The hallway looked like it went upwards a bit before it got to the door at the other end. Aloy had no idea why a hallway traveled uphill when everything was level beforehand, but she wasn’t going to question it. It was something that she didn’t care about. She moved to the door and let it open before looking inside. Once her brief sweep of it was over, she gawked slightly.

The room was a lot bigger than it had seemed from the hallway, the ceiling had to be at least thirty meters tall and the large circular device that rested in the center of the room was six meters wide. There was scientific equipment scattered around the room but nothing else.

“Well, that’s new.” Aloy murmured out loud as she took a deep breath, and that’s when the scent of the room truly hit her for the first time. For some reason, the room didn’t have the same stale, dead air smell that every other ruin had had. Instead, it smelled oddly of salt, the sea, and roses which was such an odd combination that she briefly wondered if she was actually still dreaming.

Aloy shook her head as she dismissed the thought. Green eyes scanned the room as she absentmindedly moved a few strands of braided red hair out of her eyes with a finger. The leather armor that she had on was well-worn but was also well maintained. The fur collar was nice for the cold nights of the lower parts of Nora lands, metallic armguards were the only part that wasn’t made of natural elements as they had been made from machine scraps. There were decorative beads that were sewed into the leather itself were quiet which was great for sneaking through the underbrush. The 1.7-meter-tall, nineteen-year-old had learned to be completely silent in the hunt.

Her callused hands from a life of training and combat ran over the empty frame of the entryway and hummed a soft lullaby to the air before activating her Focus. She scanned the room with both her Focus and her eyes, which led her to the device.

It was large, large enough to touch the ceiling and the two walls on opposites of the room with only a very narrow gap. It was a dark, almost oppressive shade of black and strange red runes were carved into the metal itself weren’t in any language that she knew of.

Despite her eyes, her Focus, and the lack of anything concrete, Aloy couldn’t shake the feeling that the device wasn’t completely offline. Aloy’s instincts had helped her survive more than once and right now they were telling her that there was something more to that device than she knew.

Aloy paused as she thought she heard soft voices from behind her, her hand instantly traveling to her bow and arrows. She drew back her bowstring and readied herself to fire but there was no one behind her or in the room at all.

“Is anyone out there? Come out if you are!” She called out to the emptiness of the room. If the voices really were real and were hostile, they undoubtedly would’ve attacked her when her back was turned. If they weren’t hostile, they had nothing to fear from her.

She shook her head before releasing the tension on her bowstring and put the arrow back in the quiver. As she stowed her bow she turned around again.

A frown was on her face as she scanned the device which had a holographic display which she slowly moved towards. Now, she was keeping her ears open for any noise from behind her but the voices, if there had been any at all, had ceased. She waited for a couple of minutes before she determined that there was nothing to worry about so she turned attention back to her task.

She saw that the lines that gave power to the device was currently inoperative, but they led underneath the floor so that’s where she let her gaze go.

Her guess was right as her Focus automatically lit up a series of rotating connectors. Having done this more than once during her trip to FIREBREAK, she knew that she had to rotate the connectors so they connected to both each other and the main source of power which was the device.

Figuring out the proper way that the connectors were supposed to go in tandem with each other that connected to the device was something had absorbed a few minutes of her time.

As she rotated the last connector and it clicked showing that it had been put properly into place the voices returned. They were loud enough that she could tell that at least one of them was a male and there were at least two female voices.

Aloy sprang backward and glanced around, but once again there was no one in the room aside from her. The smells of salt, the sea, and roses became even more pronounced and part of Aloy was telling her to abandon her mission, to leave and go back to Meridian and forget about this ruin so it was left alone once again.

She shook her head again; she hadn’t come this far to leave now and would see this through. She was an explorer and a truth-seeker, so she’d continue to do both for as long as she could.

The flame-haired young woman realized that the device was partially on, the holographic display panels were proof enough of that but there was something else that wasn’t allowing whatever the device was to get power.

Aloy grumbled a curse as she raked her gaze across the room. This ruin would be a lot like solving Deep Din, a ruin that she had had to navigate heavy, rushing water to traverse through. To the Old Ones, it had been a dam but to the Banuk people, it was an instrument that had been flooded. One that was used to tell many tales.

Of course, this was not a dam that was full of rushing water. It was a sinkhole that had a very unusual device in it that wasn’t receiving all of the power that it should. She activated her Focus again and followed the power sources. “Okay, what am I missing here?” She muttered as she worked her way down so she started at the ceiling.

Having been raised on her own with only one other person, who only really spoke when he needed to do so, was quite lonely for a little girl. She had taken to talking to herself while she was exploring and just making small comments to nobody but herself. It was better than doing everything in silence, at least this way she could pretend there were other people around.

Aloy’s eyes narrowed slightly as she gazed behind the device. There, hidden by the shadows of the room, was a grate. “Well, weren’t you a difficult thing to find.” She smirked slightly as she spotted it with the help of her Focus as it showed via visual overlay where the grate was. It had blended in so perfectly with the wall she wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

Using the acrobatics that had come so naturally to her to get up there would be the easy part, the hard part would be getting the grate open. She circled behind the device, examining it after a few light taps with the butt of her spear.

The meshing of the grate was heavily corroded as were the screws that kept the cover attached to the wall. It was tempting to use one of her blast bombs to blast it open, but the pressure and the proximity to the strange device itself made it a less than favorable outcome.

So, the hard way it was. Aloy sighed at the upcoming effort before she jammed the tip of the spear into one of the corners and began to work at removing the corroded screws.

After perhaps twenty minutes, she was on the last screw and wondering how it was possible for the smells of the room to become even stronger yet again.  
It was times like these, when she was alone and surrounded by the past, that she actually missed Sylens. The former Banuk shaman had been a guide to her throughout her search for answers regarding what happened to the world, how it was saved, and why it was threatened again.

He was like her in the one way that he cared about, they both wanted knowledge and would go anywhere to get it, but she was not foolish enough to think he cared about her. It was an alliance of convenience nothing more than that. He wanted answers about the world and she was the person who could make it possible for that to happen. 

She wasn’t concentrating on how much force she was putting into the act of using her spear as a fulcrum before the final screw shot outwards. It landed on the other side of the device with a ping. “Well, that works, I guess,” She muttered as she put her spear into the sling on her back.

She had explored many spaces on her journey, but this was ridiculously spacious. Soon enough, her exploration revealed why. The labyrinth of ductwork led her over abandoned living spaces, storage rooms, and a seemingly endless number of alternate pathways that she could go down and explore.

Finally, after a lot of traveling, she made it to a grate that overlooked a room that had three doors on the three walls that she could see. She wasn’t sure if there was a fourth door below where she was, but she couldn’t rule it out.

She had been in these ductworks for who knows how long and this was the only room that was designed the way that it was so she figured that this was where she’d get the answer to what that device. Or, at the very least a possible clue to where she could figure it out.

Aloy maneuvered herself so she was facing the way back before pulling out an unfinished bomb and placed one of its small components by the grate, marking her path when she returned.

Aloy knew she spent days down there, under the earth, but she wasn’t sure how many. She had even lost count of the foraging trips up above. She wanted to know what the device did and it was a matter of personal pride now. But she also knew that it had waited hundreds of years to reveal its secrets and the time that frustrated her meant nothing to it. She had waited twelve years to get answers about her past, she was determined to get the secret of these ruins. She could wait a few more days.

She used some of the metal shards for her arrowheads to create a map on one of the walls in her basecamp which she marked as a star. The room with the three or four doors was designated as a question mark. The rest she methodically investigated to make sure that they were clear.

The bedrooms were undoubtedly for the staff of project REBIRTH. They must have abandoned the city above to the FAS staff and the Zero Dawn workers and sealed themselves in this part of the facility that’s what she guessed from some of the datafiles anyway.

It wasn’t just bedrooms and storage rooms though, there was what she guessed was a place for them to get food, a few science-related rooms, and one room she couldn’t figure out the purpose of but it had an odd table with holes in it, sticks that were hanging on a rack and a lot of balls, some were solid colors and some were striped but all of them had numbers except for a solid white one.

Aloy figured it was just a game the Old Ones played like how Nora children played Pin the Horns on The Grazer and left it at that.

Finally, after days of exploring the other passageways and rooms, she made her way back to the chamber that held the three or four doors that piqued her interest. But it wasn’t time wasted by any means. One never knew what was around the corner, good or bad. She had learned from experience to never take ruin delving lightly and especially if it was related to the mystery that you were trying to solve.

The first door led to nothing special other than a handful of heavily corrupted data files that once her Focus started attempting to restore once she scanned them.  
The second door led to a passageway that was caved in and impassable. Not an unusual find in ancient ruins by any means.

The third one sent a shockwave down her spine as she moved to open it. Something caused all the hair on her arms and neck to stand up straight and that scared her. She moved down the corridor until it made a left turn and saw a wider corridor than the one that she just came from. 

There was a very loud, very mechanical sounding hum that she heard before she even entered the hallway, whatever was behind the door at the end of the hallway was massive. It didn’t sound like a Corruptor or a Deathbringer but it didn’t put her at ease.

What also didn’t help was that corridor felt colder than the one she just left so she put two shock wires on the ground using her trip caster before grabbing three arrows and putting them on the bowstring as she moved slowly towards the door.

The noise only became louder as she approached the door which had been sealed from the inside and she could feel her nerves, which were already on edge, go on high alert. “Warning door integrity at two percent.” She heard from her Focus.

It shuddered as a howl sounded and there was a slam from the other side. “Door integrity at one percent.” Aloy’s amber eyes widened as she ran back down the hallway away from it before the warning sign flickered and died as a large, black claw pried the door open.

It wasn’t just black though there were white marks interspersed on the paw and leg as it moved its head, glaring at her with gleaming red eyes that were full of unbridled hatred. They reminded her of HADES and HEPHAESTUS’s voices.

The wolf-like creature charged at her and she fired three arrows that sunk into its shoulder and leg. Quickly switching to her sling, she put a Chillwater bomb. A liquid chemical reaction that froze on contact as its vessel shattered. 

It spasmed uncontrollably for a minute and she fired her Chillwater bomb at it which hit it point-blank covering it in frost and it almost creaked.

Chillwater, like Blaze and Sparker, was an element for creating a specific type of arrows or bombs. It could freeze machines in their tracks until she used her fire arrows. Many of the machines had this on their forms in some way and she speculated that it acted as a coolant to prevent them from overheating when they were first created.

At least for the machines that weren’t the massive, combat-oriented, raptor-like Thunderjaws. She knew from experience how useful Chillwater could be as long as she didn’t directly touch the liquid since it was freezing cold even in its storage containers.

It slowly shook its head before it charged. Thinking quickly, she dropped her sling before putting three Blaze arrows on her bowstring and firing. The creature howled in pain before it loomed over Aloy and batted her away.

She didn’t notice that it knocked her Focus off of her ear as she pulled her spear off her back and charged towards it. The dark thing charged at her and pounced. She slid and stabbed it upwards into its chest causing it to howl again before flying into the wall.

Before it could get up, she stabbed it in the head and it crumbled completely. She began to circle it and observed it, it was unlike anything she had seen before it looked like a wolf but it was stronger and meaner. Her eyes widened as it dissolved into nothingness.

“What in the world just happened, that was bizarre.” She spoke into the charged air as she moved into the doorway, the small hairs on her arms and neck lifted slightly again. Then just as quickly as it had come, the static vanished.

The room she stepped out into was massive, dwarfing the one that she had made her temporary home by far. The first thing that she noticed was the claw marks that were on the walls and floor, and the skeletons that were interspersed throughout it.

They looked like they had been mauled by… that thing since the corpses and the walls had the same, deep slashes in them but nothing else looked damaged.

Aloy was no stranger to seeing skeletons at this point but something ached inside of her. Maybe it was because they had survived the end of the world and were working on finding a new one but that they had been killed by whatever thing she had just fought before finding it made her pause for a moment.

There was a device that looked similar to the one in the room where she was except it was smaller, a lot smaller than its counterpart above. This one was white instead of black and where the strange red glyphs rested on the first, identical blue glyphs rested on this one.

The other side was dominated by a massive power transformer and substation that had wires carrying the power upwards. Aloy had no idea why this would be so far below the main complex but her best guess was that it had been constructed down here for REBIRTH. She wasn’t entirely sure why but she was going off of the knowledge that she had acquired. 

She was amazed that this was still working after all this time, she just needed a way to figure out what to do. Aloy circled around the transformer and substation until she came across something that didn’t fit. A glowing green button that flashed silently in the middle of the panel it was embedded in. “Well, I imagine that this does what I think it does. Otherwise, I’m probably dead.” She whispered before resting her hand on it and pushing down.

The transformer and substation, which had been loud beforehand, suddenly became a lot more deafening. Aloy put her hands over her ears in her a vain attempt to block it out. She moved to leave the room entirely and that’s when she noticed that the smaller device was flickering slightly with blue sparks. It seems that it had begun to acquire enough power to turn on.

As she scrambled to leave the room and the door shut behind her, she didn’t notice the device glow with a bright blue light and the middle of it had gone from a view of the wall to a shimmering canvas of white.

Aloy moved back to where she had first come into this section of the caves and hoisted herself back into the duct system using her grappling hook to climb.  
She could hear the transformer and substation even as she crawled through the cramped ducts and until finally, it subsided. By the time it did, she had reached the place that she had called home for the last several days. As she started to exit, she noticed the device has begun to flicker with red sparks much like the blue ones from the one below.

She carefully dropped onto the floor and had just made it to the center of the room when the device shook. The soft voices that she had heard before were back except now they weren’t soft anymore. They were loud, loud enough to be heard. The device shook violently as Aloy grabbed her head and winced, her vision going blurry.

One of the female voices called out, it was loud and full of concern. "BY? BY? BY!!" Then a low, raspy, male voice sounded. "IRT! ONG?" like the female's voice it was full of concern. There were more than two but she couldn’t tell what they were saying because they all seemed to be speaking at once.

Aloy dropped her spear and put both of her hands on the side of her head as they became even louder. She doubled over and swayed as she tried to remain on her feet. The last thing Aloy saw before her vision went black was the device turn a bright red color. Where nothing but a view of the wall had been before was an oppressive pool of black.


	2. Chapter One: Strange dreams and stranger feelings

Ruby tossed and turned in her sleep. She was having the same dream that she had been having for the past two and a half weeks; a strange blue sky with a whole moon and machines in many different shapes and sizes.

Some were landbound, but others took to the skies and prowled the waters of this strange place. And the girl…the girl was the most prevalent thing in her dreams, flaming red hair that was elaborately done, piercing green eyes, and a bow in her hands with an arrow nocked and ready to fire.

She waited patiently for a strange bipedal one that had a blue light as an ‘eye’ to pass before she quickly fired an arrow at it, which got its attention. As it approached where she was hiding in tall red grass, she silently grabbed her spear before thrusting it into the spot where she had fired before, and the machine collapsed with a soft whirring.

In another moment the girl approached a sizeable herd of machines that looked like deer, she heard a roar as a large cat-like machine pounced.

The dream ended there and Ruby shot up in bed, her face dripping with sweat. Every night the dream had different machines, and it always ended with the strange girl getting ambushed and Ruby waking up in a cold sweat.

For some reason, the dreams didn’t feel like they were just dreams. They were impossible, yet the dreams were so vivid. So real. Too real.

They had stopped the attack on Haven and would be heading to Atlas, once Qrow and Ozpin deemed them ready to travel. Team RWBY was finally reunited, Blake had rallied the Faunus and had come to Haven’s aid, and the school was saved. The school had lost its headmaster and a great deal of its staff. But others would take up the mantle and rebuild the areas that had been damaged in the fighting between them, Salem’s group, and the Branwen tribe.

For now, all team RWBY and JNR, as well as Oscar, could do was take the time they needed to prepare for the trip to Atlas. Blake introduced or reintroduced them all to Ghira, Kali, and Ilia.

Ilia was a bit taken aback by how much of a non-snob Weiss was. However, once it was explained to her that Weiss was not her father’s daughter, she turned a deep shade of red and pink in embarrassment. Weiss wasn’t offended at all by Ilia’s assumptions since they were well-founded, if no longer correct.

She had admitted that she had grown a great deal from the day she left Atlas, as Ruby pointed out how haughty and entitled Weiss had been at first but was now her bestest friend ever. Which earned her a glare and a brief remark from the ex-heiress about how her manners still needed improvement.

The dreams had started two days after Yang had come out of the Vault with the Relic. Ozpin, and hence Oscar, had kept it close and didn’t let it out of their sight. Ruby was half-convinced that it was the reason that her dreams had started, but she was sure that Qrow wouldn’t understand. And Ozpin, while he was wise, was preoccupied with other things currently.

Ruby hadn’t told anyone that she was having strange dreams though she had run into Ilia on the balcony, and she had just guessed that something was bothering her. Turns out she wasn’t the only one who had trouble sleeping but her shyness, and Ilia’s quietness, prevented them from actually talking. So, after the initial conversation, they just sat together in silence until one of them drifted back to their bed.

Soon, the day finally arrived for their train to Argus. Which would lead them to Atlas and was met with various forms of approval by the seven teenagers. Weiss wasn’t happy about it, but she understood that it was necessary so after a couple of complaints she didn’t bring it up again. After the few sealed crates of Dust that were needed were sent to the station ahead of time, they all headed off.

Qrow decided to keep the others in line while Yang wanted to make sure that no one scuffed, scratched, dinged, or otherwise damaged Bumblebee, which earned a teasing remark from Nora about not wanting her bike stolen. Yang nodded thoughtfully as Ruby called shotgun and hopped behind her sister.

When they arrived and the bike had stopped moving, Ruby had immediately zoomed off to get Yang a gift and had been teasing her sister with it for the past ten minutes. “C’mon Rubes, just show it to me.”

“Nope! You’ll have to wait and see!” Ruby said as Yang tried to catch her before she zoomed away using her semblance.

She circled where Weiss, Nora, Oscar, and Jaune were sitting and laughed softly while Weiss rolled her eyes, though a small smile was on her lips. “What a waste of time.”

“I can’t believe we get to travel to Argus by train! The beautiful northern coastline! Oh, Ren! Do you think it’s too early to go to the beach?” Nora asked, dodging Ruby and Yang as she ran up to her best friend.

Ren had come back with enough drinks for all of them. He nodded and started handing drinks out to everyone, with the exception of Qrow and Blake who were both elsewhere in the station. “Unfortunately, but we will be one step closer to Atlas.”

Ruby picked up on her partner’s sense of unease as the sisters stopped running around and took a sip of her hot chocolate. “I know you’re worried, Weiss, but Team RWBY won’t leave your side for a second! I promise!”

“Thank you, Ruby. I appreciate it.” Weiss gave a small smile, before Ruby’s vision went fuzzy for a second and she grabbed her head.

“Ruby? Everything okay?” Oscar asked as he looked at her. She could almost hear the concern in Ozpin’s voice as well as Oscar’s own.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine, Oscar… thank you for asking.” Ruby could’ve sworn that in that disorienting moment she had seen herself not in the train station, but a snowy forest at night. She shook it off quickly and took another sip of cocoa as Qrow finished dressing down the two ‘Huntsmen’ that would be guarding their train.

“You know… for as annoyed as I get with this whole thing sometimes, I’d rather do it then have those slackers do it,” Weiss said to unanimous agreement.

Qrow fiddled with one of the rings on his fingers before he looked at the drinks that everyone had. “What? Couldn’t get me one?”

“You weren’t here though. How were we supposed to know what you wanted?” Yang asked, which was met with a frown and a click of his tongue.

“Touché. Is everything ready to go? Bike loaded up?” Qrow asked as everyone nodded again.

“Just waiting on Blake, as usual,” Weiss said, her voice mostly joking.

“Good, I’m going get myself a coffee… I’ll be back before the train leaves.” Qrow put his hands in his pockets and sauntered off.

“I’ll be right back,” Ruby quietly said to Oscar before she made a Semblance enhanced dash into the nearest lady’s room which was thankfully empty. After splashing her face with water multiple times, she finally got the courage to look up and saw her reflection, except it wasn’t her as she was now.

In the mirror, she had gained at least an extra foot in height so now instead of being 5’4”, she was closer to 6’4”, which made her taller even than Yang.

Her hair was a lot longer than it was now. When Ruby moved, she saw that it went down her shoulders and partly down her back.

She could see that there was a small triangular piece of metal resting on her ear and wondered what it was.

The mirror version of her had two scars on her right cheek as well as one over her left eye.

Her hair was now completely black and had a couple of strings of beads in it. Some of her hair was braided but most of it was left untouched.

On her right cheek was a tribal triangular design in blue paint. Upon a closer look, Ruby could see that each of the three larger triangles that made up the design were themselves hundreds of smaller blue triangles that were interconnected with each other at their points.

Running vertically down over her left eye until her neck were two tribal lines, one brown and one white. Unlike the triangle design on her cheek, they were very simple.  
A bow rested on her back along with a spear. Crescent Rose was nowhere to be seen. When she turned, her mirror-self turned with her.

When Ruby looked down, she blushed as she noticed that her mirror-self had a rather full chest, not dissimilar to Yang's. The top was similar to how her older sister had started dressing ever since Beacon had fallen. Still stylish, but no longer flaunting her assets just because she could. Ruby rather liked how it looked if she was being honest with herself.

The armor was a mix of metal and what looked like leather. It was all brown, blue, and occasionally purple. Her current ensemble of a corset, blouse, combat skirt, and of course, her cloak were all replaced by a form-fitting leather chest plate that had a thin, see-through, metal mesh on the sides, leather pants with pouches, and metallic armguards.

“Ruby, what’s taking so long? The trains about to get going.” Yang’s voice called from outside. “Do you need me to come in there?”

“No, Just a minute!” Ruby called back before she washed her hands for effect then exited the bathroom.

“Oscar said you went in there a while ago. Are you sure everything’s okay?” Yang asked, tilting her head as she did.

“Yeah, everything’s fine, Yang. I promise.”

“Hmm, okay,” Yang said, a fake smile on her face. She could tell that everything was definitely not alright with her baby sister but she knew that Ruby was just as stubborn as she was and if she didn’t want to admit anything was wrong then she wouldn’t but Yang would stay close to her regardless.

Ruby took a deep breath and tried to shake off what she had seen before she started walking back to the group. As she got closer to the group, she could hear a faint voice in the back of her mind. It was as if it was calling someone, calling her.

She winced softly as the voice slowly got louder the closer she got to the Relic. She couldn’t hear what the voice was saying, but she could tell it was feminine and almost ethereal.

She forced the feeling down until they had begun to board the train as her vision started to swim again. She put a hand on her head and instinctively grabbed Yang’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

Yang looked down at her sister. “Ruby, what’s wrong? Sis?”

“Kid, you okay?” Qrow asked once he had pushed his way back to his nieces. Yang’s eyes were full of worry as she shielded her sister from the back instinctively.

“I-I dunno. I-I just feel weird... The Relic feels like it's calling to me.” Ruby said quietly before she slumped over into Yang’s arms.

Qrow lightly rested his palm on Ruby’s forehead and her skin was cold, really cold. A lot colder than it should’ve been for having been in a heated train station. It was as if his youngest niece had been out in the Atlesian tundra for hours without her Aura.

Yang was barely able to keep herself from freaking out about the fact that her sister was unconscious and freezing cold. As soon as they were all on board and the other passengers had gone on ahead, she dropped to her knees.

“Ruby? Ruby? Ruby!?” Yang gently shook her sister before her whole body glowed yellow and Ruby’s glowed red. The older sibling’s eyes rapidly changed between red and purple before fluttering to a close.

After several very tense seconds, they opened again. “I-I gave her a large portion of my Aura… hopefully that helps her wake up soon.”

She turned her attention to Oscar. “Ozpin, I know you’re listening. Do you know what happened to her? What the hell did the Relic do to my sister?”

Oscar’s body slumped for a second before an older, wiser, voice left the fourteen-year-old, farmhand and he shook his head. “I confess, I am at a loss. They are by nature inert until they are directly called upon, and gaining a response may happen only once in a lifetime. I am rather familiar with this one in particular and not once has it acted of its own accord as Miss Rose described. Even if it did, Ruby’s experience would have been a mere instant, vivid, and without question. Instead, your sister seemed very disoriented and confused.”

Yang frowned but she reluctantly accepted what the former headmaster said. “Guys, I think we should go to our rooms and put our things down…Then I think it’s a good idea you tell us about the Relic. That okay, Oz?” Yang’s voice was soft but sharp as she used his nickname. Her tone made it clear she wasn’t so much asking as telling.

“It is, Qrow and I can find a lounge for us to talk if there is one. I think your plan is best, Miss Xiao Long.” Ozpin nodded and let her decide what they would do.

Getting into an argument was something he’d rather avoid at the present time.

Once Blake and Weiss had put their bags down and given Yang soft hugs, they left her alone. Yang gently kissed her sister's forehead and then laid hers against it.

"Please sis, please wake up soon. Please wake up." The fact that Ozpin didn’t know what was going on with her baby sister scared her more than she would’ve admitted.

She cradled Ruby in her arms and hummed a soft lullaby. It was their special one, the one she only used in really upsetting situations like when Summer died. Right now, this definitely qualified as a really upsetting situation.

When the lullaby was finally over, Yang reluctantly put Ruby back on the bed and got up. “I love you, Ruby. Always have, always will. Please wake up soon.” She gave one final look at her baby sister before she closed the door to the sleeper cabin and went to go to get answers.

* * *

Aloy’s body felt like it had been run over by a herd of Grazers, and her head pounded with a headache. She slowly got up and rubbed her temples with her thumbs. It took her more than a minute before she registered that she wasn't where she had collapsed, and where she had ended up was very different than where she had been.

A look out of the window showed a snowy forest. Aloy wasn't sure where she was, but wherever it was, it was moving and fast. She patted her body to make sure that she had everything that she had had before. "Yup, my arms and legs are still here… well, that's obvious, but still." She ran her fingers across her head and frowned when she discovered her Focus was no longer on her ear

The Seeker began to panic and look for the device before a memory flashed and she frowned. "That creature... it must have knocked it off my ear. My spear is gone too… that's right I dropped it before I collapsed."

As the girl was lost in thought, the door opened, and she was met by the sight of three teenagers. The blond-haired, lilac eyed girl reacted first and activated a gauntlet that covered her arm. Aloy noticed that she had a metallic arm, and the black-haired girl had… cat ears?

Once Ozpin told them about the Relic, the rest of team RWBY had wanted to check on their leader, sister, and partner. What they weren’t expecting was the fact that Ruby was gone and that a new girl, unfamiliar to any of them would be looking at them curiously.

Aloy scanned the three. The blonde seemed to be the leader of the trio, so if she told her companions to attack, they probably would. She slowly put her hands up to show them that she had no intention of attacking them. The machine hunter knew that she would be able to fire off a shot quickly, but she wasn’t going to provoke a fight if she could avoid it

The remaining members of team RWBY looked at each other, hands hovering near their weapons, but they didn’t draw them. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister!?” Yang asked her lip curling into a snarl.

Aloy understood what the girl was saying, though it took her a second to process the words through the girl’s accent. It was faint, but Aloy could tell that it was there. Erend, Avad, Helis, and all the Banuk that she met on her journey had had thicker accents than the girl, so it wasn’t as difficult to understand her as it was any of them.

[One moment I was delving through an Old One ruin, and then I was fighting unconsciousness to find myself here. Wherever here is.]

Aloy said as her hands remained where they were, but she slowly moved her head to look outside the room’s window. Wherever this thing was going, it reminded her of The Cut, the Banuk territory that was once Yellowstone.

Yang, Blake, and Weiss looked at each other. The girl’s accent was pretty thick, so it took each of them time to realize that wherever she had been before, she hadn’t planned on ending up on the train to Argus.

“Weiss, Blake. What do you think of her?” She whispered to her team, as she turned to them, keeping one eye on the stranger, they huddled up in a triangle, that way they could each watch her.

Blake spoke first. “She hasn’t done anything to suggest that she is a threat. Not to be macabre or anything, but I highly doubt she killed Ruby. There’s no blood, no sign of anything being out of place. I understand that Ruby wasn’t feeling well, but there would still be something if this mysterious girl had done anything.”

Weiss nodded. “I concur, she doesn’t seem to know where she is or even who we are. There’s no advantage to killing Ruby, none at all.”

Yang’s anger faded, but only enough that it was replaced by the worry over where Ruby was. She took a deep breath before she deactivated Ember Celica and looked at the girl, who hadn’t moved.

The brawler stood up and looked at her. “I’m not going to lie; I don’t trust you. But, whatever, you’re here. So, should I call you Stranger? Or do you have a name?”

The old her would’ve attacked without a second thought, but her training taught her that throwing a punch didn’t always have to be the first thing for her to do.

Besides, Blake and Weiss were right, the girl standing in front of her hadn’t made a single threatening action the entire time, and she hadn’t seemed to recognize any of them.

When the blonde spoke to her, once she figured out the accent Aloy slightly moved one of her legs forward. [Aloy, my name is Aloy. What should I call you three?] She motioned to the three of them.

It didn’t take much to realize that ‘Aloy’, as she called herself, was asking for their names. Yang pointed at herself, “Yang Xiao Long.”

Weiss did the same thing that Yang had done. “Weiss Schnee, a pleasure, I suppose.” She said with a slight nod to Blake.

Blake’s cat ears lowered slightly before she spoke. “Blake, Blake Belladonna.” Her amber eyes met Aloy’s and stayed there.

Aloy’s brain picked up on the fact that ‘Weiss’ and ‘Blake’ had different sounding accents than ‘Yang’. They were faint as well, but she definitely noticed that they were there. She figured that they were from different tribes, though Blake’s cat ears still confused her.

When there was a scream, Aloy’s instincts told her something was wrong, so she unslung her bow from her back. And, nearly ran into an older man whose clothes were wrinkled, his hair was oily and lazily slicked back. His breath stunk of old alcohol.

They looked at each other in wary shock before Yang came out. “What’s going on?” She asked Qrow.

“Grimm, grab your weapons! Who’s this?” He pointed at Aloy.

Aloy actually had an easier time understanding him since he didn’t seem to have an accent at all. She didn’t doubt that he had one, but she couldn’t pick up on it. Aloy wasn’t sure what a Grimm was, but she was about to find out.

“Later, we have bigger things to worry about. C’mon, we have a train to protect.” Yang said as she beckoned Aloy to follow them. She didn’t trust Aloy, but right now dealing with Grimm was the priority, so she forced herself to push her mistrust and her worry for Ruby aside in order to focus on the Grimm.

Aloy followed the four of them to a ladder with a hatch above it. When the man pushed it open, there was a rush of cold air, so it was safe to assume that it led outside.

When Aloy got outside, she saw creatures that looked similar to the one that she killed back in the Old One ruin. These had wings and looked more like Ravagers than the wolf-like one from the ruins. “So, these are Grimm. Interesting.”

She pulled out three Blaze arrows and let them soar through the air, they landed in one of the Grimm’s wings, and the Blaze ignited them as the creature screeched in pain.

Aloy’s zone of focus was on the creatures that were called Grimm. She noticed but didn’t spare a second glance at the fact that the five of them were joined by three more boys and a girl.

She soon found out that her regular arrows couldn’t pierce the white armor that surrounded the Grimm’s gleaming red eyes, but her Hardpoint arrows, usually used to rip plating off machines, could pierce the armor, so she quickly alternated firing those, her Blaze, and her Chill arrows.

Aloy fired off one last shot as she heard a shout, and her fighting companions scrambled to the hatches that led to the top of the train. She realized they were quickly approaching a tunnel, she slung her bow on her back, before sprinting to the closest one and doing a running slide into the hatch.

She quickly managed to regroup with the others who were crowding around a brown-haired man with a broken arm. Aloy had seen many strange things on her journey, but when the blonde-haired boys started to glow white, she thought she was still asleep for half a second.

“Um, Yang. Who’s that?” Jaune asked as he used his Aura to amplify Dudley’s. His voice was softly accented, it sounded very faintly like Erend’s own accent, but Aloy wasn’t sure if it was her imagination.

“Oh, right.” Yang looked at her and pointed to the small group that she had been addressing. “Go on. introduce yourself, I’m not going to do it.”  
Aloy rolled her eyes. “Of course, That would be too easy.” She thought to herself with a faint hint of amusement.

[I’m Aloy. It’s a pleasure.] She kept it simple.

It didn’t take long for Ren, Nora, and Oscar very long to figure out that she had said her name and a short greeting. To Ren and Nora, she sounded almost like she was from southern Mistral, and thanks to Ozpin, Oscar barely had time to register that Aloy had an accent at all.

“Right, well if I may ask, how did you come into contact with Aloy? And where is Miss Rose?” Ozpin asked once he had taken control of Oscar’s body.

“We have bigger things to worry about. Believe me, I don’t want to think about anything but my sister. Right now, the Grimm come first on the priority list. It’s what Ruby would say.” Yang cut Qrow off just as he was about to say something.

That didn’t deter her uncle. “Oz, I agree with her. we can worry about that after. I don’t like it but Firecracker’s right. Our duty comes first.”

Aloy’s attention had been drawn to the lamp that rested on Oscar’s hip as the conversation moved away from her introduction to the four, something drew her attention to the thing. She felt like she was experiencing a faint pull towards it. For a split second, she thought she could smell roses and stale air.

The pull was broken when Yang, Blake, Weiss, Qrow, and the smaller black-haired boy started to move away from their companions. [I’m assuming there’s some sort of plan?] She asked Qrow as she put her hands on her hips.

Once he navigated past the accent, he nodded. “We’re splitting up. The six of us are staying here with the Relic and those three are going to make sure the train gets to Argus.”

He waved a hand to the group that had stayed behind. While his niece, her team, and their friends were trying to figure out a plan after Ozpin told them the Relic attracted Grimm. When he mentioned Aloy and asked if she should know, Ozpin had nodded.

Ozpin highly doubted that Aloy was a spy for Salem considering the strange events that had happened to Ruby had preceded Aloy’s arrival. He also pointed out that Aloy hadn’t tried to harm any of them in any way, shape, or form.

He was still wary of her, yes, but Ozpin believed she would show her true colors given time. Trust but verify was what he said. So, until Qrow was absolutely certain about her one way or another, he’d do exactly that. He’d trust the mysterious Aloy but he’d keep a close eye on her.

* * *

Ruby’s head felt as if it had just been stepped on by a horde of Goliaths, her vision was hazy and her eyes burned. It was like she had opened them in a pool but a thousand times worse than that. Once they finally felt like they were no longer burning she slowly opened her eyes.

She immediately noticed two things. The first, was that the feeling that she had had around the Relic was gone and she felt like the normal, happy go lucky, Ruby again.

The second thing though was way more concerning to her and that was that she had no idea where she was. It was a room with a really tall ceiling that was made out of stone. It looked like a cave so that’s what she assumed.

There was an inactive transformer and when she turned around, she noticed a collapsed something… that looked it had violently exploded. There were tiny impact craters in the walls which she noticed had Beowulf claw marks on them. They were unmistakable… and so were the marks on the skeletons around the room.

“Yang? Qrow?” She called out, she was expecting a prank since her sister and uncle had pulled elaborate pranks on her before. Granted she did it to them too but still…

Ruby shook her head. No, it was more likely that something had happened after she had slipped into unconsciousness. Maybe the train had crashed and she had been dragged here because it was shelter.

She took out her Scroll. If her team or her friends were nearby, she could contact them. She looked down and frowned when she saw that it was off. Ruby knew she had charged it last night since she charged it every night. When she pressed and held the power button, she was expecting it to turn on but it didn’t. Not even the Atlas logo showed up as it usually did.

The scarlet Huntress frowned as she turned her Scroll around. She was seriously hoping that she accidentally had forgotten to charge it as she popped the back cover off of it.

What she saw shocked and concerned her. The clasps that held the Dust crystal in place were still secure, but what was concerning to her was the crystal itself was dull and gray instead of the normal yellow color that Electric Dust crystals were supposed to be.

She took a deep breath; she couldn’t let herself get overwhelmed. That wouldn’t help her figure out was going on or where she was. She put the Scroll down and turned to Crescent Rose. Ruby ejected the magazine with practiced ease and removed the top round from it.

Years of seeing and buying Dust ammunition rounds had taught her how to tell if a Dust round was active or not. The Dust that resided within the bullet head was inert just as her Scroll’s crystal was.

Ruby frantically checked all of the others before tossing her magazine to the side. She wrapped her cloak around herself and tried to calm herself down before she had a panic attack. She took several long, deep breaths before she felt her racing heartbeat go back to normal.

Ruby was torn. She knew that one of the rules of being lost was not to wander off since that’d make it hard for rescuers to well rescue you. But on the other hand, this definitely wasn’t the Argus Limited and since her Dust was useless to her, she had a feeling that when the Relic whammied her something happened. Something she didn’t understand.

* * *

Aloy was still shaking off the feeling from the train crash. She had found two blankets that were very thick and wrapped herself completely in them. The impact still hurt like hell, but she was alive and nothing was broken, thank GAIA for that. Unfortunately, that’s when the yelling started.

“Great! This is great! We’re stranded, we lost a third of our party and my sister and the best part is that instead, we have a mysterious girl named Aloy!”

She dislodged a mount of some kind before she, and it toppled back into the snow. Aloy smirked at that before offering a hand that Yang took after a second.  
The Seeker watched as Yang, Qrow, and Weiss started to bicker back and forth which soon roped in Oscar, except he was apparently two people.

She thought it was a waste of both time and energy when the bickering turned into shouting and that turned into a discussion about the… Relic which led to shouting back and forth until Ozpin, who apparently could take over Oscar’s body realized the Relic wasn’t on his hip.

Aloy tuned out all of the pointless talking. Instead, her attention turned to the surrounding forests as her survival instincts kicked in. She muttered softly under her breath, wishing she had her Focus as she looked for a trail. As she muttered to herself, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and her hand went to her bow.

She lowered her hand when she saw that it was just Blake whose cat ears were twitching in her direction. Aloy still found it odd that she had cat ears on her head. But her eyes lowered as she saw Blake pick up the strange lamp that was apparently called a Relic.

Aloy turned away and resumed looking for a trail until she heard the boy struggling to get his next words out of his mouth. “Hurry…he’s… trying to stop you.” And that’s when she looked back.

“Stop her from what?” Yang asked as she moved in front of Blake a bit.

“He’s afraid… you’ll find out what he’s hiding.” Blake stepped back and held the Relic closer as Oscar strained to talk. “Jinn… Say her name to summon her.”

The snow started to blow more and Aloy shielded her eyes the best she could as the Relic glowed and Blake whispered. “Jinn?

* * *

Ruby did her best to stay put but she had no food or water. She knew that an average human could survive anywhere from eight to twenty-one days without food but only three days without water, so she couldn’t afford to wait for very long. It also didn’t help that her metabolism was still fast. Not as fast as it was when she was younger but she still burned a lot of calories.

Eventually, her hunger overruled her caution. She left the room where she had been holed up, Crescent Rose fully extended. The room led out into a hallway where she saw a door at the other end, but it looked like a fight had happened since there were scorch and frost marks on the floor.

As she moved towards the other end of the hallway, she saw something lying on the ground and her silver eyes widened. It was the small triangular thing that had been on the ear of her mirror self.

Ruby slowly kneeled and picked it up before standing back up and turning it over. The device was very lightweight, and she was able to hold it between two fingers. Down the middle was a thin white line, which she took to be how it displayed the power level.

Taking the hint from the mirror version of herself, Ruby put the device on and was surprised when it activated. “I see; I guess this thing is like a Scroll but mixed with a Semblance?” Ruby asked no one but herself.

She shifted Crescent Rose to her right hand and experimentally raised her left hand and swiped left, noticing that the UI shifted in the direction of her swipe. She swiped back to the first part and then swiped right. “I see, this must be how I control the UI.”

The Huntress shifted it back to the original view and noticed that the left side was labeled “Video Diaries” while the right side was labeled as “Machine Notes.” She was curious about both of those but for right now she had to keep moving.

She deactivated the device and continued to move down the hallway. That led her into a room with two other doors as well a grate that looked like it had been kicked off its hinges.

Ruby decided to cautiously investigate the two rooms before she moved on into what looked like an air duct system. The first was just a bedroom while the second one was caved in.

She really wished that she didn’t have to crawl through the air ducts. Unfortunately, it looked like the only way to ascend so she took several deep breaths and folded Crescent Rose before stowing it on her back. Ruby experimentally tapped the device twice, which seemed to be how it was activated.

Her eyes widened when she saw that the device highlighted what looked like footsteps which led into the vent which she followed. Once she was inside the system, she saw that the footsteps were superimposed by the reconstructed hologram of a girl’s figure. Then more as the system recreated the foot traffic before her eyes. Some of the figures were overlapping so she took a guess and figured that the overlapping figures led to a central location.

Her guess was proven right when she saw a vent similar to the one she crawled in from. Once she entered, she realized how narrow of a space she was now in. Thankfully she was small and thin enough to maneuver out of the cramped space.

She rubbed her elbows as she took in the room. The vent that she had crawled out of was behind a much larger device than the one she had seen back in her ‘entry’ chamber. Except this model was more than double the size and the colors were different. It took up the length of the room and was black with red markings.

It reminded her of the Grimm, which caused her to shudder as she rubbed her arms. The air in the room was stale and cold. She could’ve sworn that it smelled very faintly like snow but it was probably her imagination. As her silver eyes scanned the room, she noticed for the first time that it seemed like it was lived in.

Ruby was familiar with the concept of a temporary basecamp; any aspiring Huntsman or Huntress was. On one of the walls was a map that detailed where she was now and what looked like the system of vents that she had crawled through. One of the corners had a small collection of furs that were obviously for sleeping and a couple of pouches on a table.

The thing that caught her eye the most however was laying in the center of the room. A beautifully crafted spear rested on the floor. Even from a small distance, she could tell that it was well made. Ruby walked over and picked it up delicately.

The spear was around four feet long and a larger component down by the base which was carefully and tightly wrapped in place by a well-crafted leather portion. It was well tended but also well used as she could tell that pieces of the shaft and the spear tip had been replaced.

“Well, whoever was here before obviously cared for this weapon. I can see why… it’s so well crafted!” Ruby ran her hands over it and tried to avoid going too crazy over it.

That’s when she noticed that her mouth was dry and it was a bit hard to swallow. She had to find water. that was more important right now and she could examine and ogle the spear later.

Ruby gave a small mental apology to whoever made this base camp as she lifted several of the pouches and shook them so she could hopefully try to find a canteen. Several of them sounded like metal so she put those back where she found them. A few were labeled things like “Blaze”, “Chillwater”, “Metalburn”, and “Sparker”.

While she didn’t know what they specifically entailed she was smart enough to know that Blaze typically meant something fire-related, Chillwater probably meant ice-related, and Sparker was undoubtedly electric-based.

She very carefully set those back where they were before continuing her search for the sound of sloshing water. Thankfully, the very last one she shook had the sloshing she was looking for. Carefully, she unscrewed the smooth metal cap and began to greedily down the water

Once she had had her fill, she rescrewed the cap onto the waterskin and sent a silent thank you to the person who made the camp. She opened one of the pouches that she wasn’t able to determine what was in it by sound alone and was both thrilled and relieved to see blueberries in it.

“I know I probably seem like a thief to you… but I promise I’ll make it up to you when you get back.” She said to the empty air.

For now, all she could do was wait and make sure the camp wasn’t anymore disturbed as she rested. It wasn’t much as far as repayment went but it was the least, she could do until whoever set the camp up came back. “Now, let’s see what you can tell me.” She double-tapped the device on her ear to activate it before swiping to the left.


	3. Dual Realizations

Ruby’s silver eyes were the size of dinner platters as the last video diary ended. She had learned about this world’s history, the history of this planet that was called Earth.

She had listened and watched the video diaries that Aloy, the girl from her dreams had made. She learned about her childhood, and her heart broke. The fact that such a painful burden was put onto a little girl for something that she had no control over. Ruby learned about the Massacre at the Proving and Rost’s sacrifice.

She learned about the journey that Aloy had embarked on for answers, about Sylens. And that he helped her out of his own interest in the truth of this world.

But what really broke her heart was Aloy learned… about the truth. About how one man caused a chain of events that would lead to the death of the world and one woman’s insane plan for the rebirth of the world. Project Zero Dawn.

There was something…darkly fascinating about the whole thing. It was something that Ruby couldn’t even fathom happening on Remnant. She knew that Salem was the biggest threat but even her and her Grimm hordes were twisted forms of organic life.

She learned about the Lightkeeper protocol, which was how Aloy was born. A clone of the woman who spearheaded Zero Dawn, Elisabet Sobeck, and of the mission that she had been born to do. Reunite GAIA with her subprotocols, which seemed like it was far easier said than done.

Ruby took in all the information that she had learned as she took stock of all of Aloy’s supplies. It had been days since she first come to the basecamp and she had accepted that now Aloy was… probably on Remnant.

She didn’t have any plan or any guesses of what to do beyond do her best to complete Aloy’s mission. “I know that this isn’t truly my fight… but I don’t know what else to do… so I’ll do everything I can to complete the mission that Elisabet and GAIA gave you. That’s all I can do, Aloy.”

Her mind turned to her friends and her family. She had to figure out a way to get back to them. The Huntress had to find some way to get back to them, to get back to Qrow, to Yang. Ruby forced her breathing to slow down as she thought about it.

Whatever whammied her and caused her to end up in Aloy’s world… on Earth had probably caused Aloy to end up on Remnant. That just solidified Ruby’s initial idea and she hoped that by rebuilding GAIA in Aloy’s place that this would allow her to go back to Remnant… to reunite with her family.

She decided that she’d set out for the world above tomorrow as she settled down for the night.

* * *

“Salem can’t be killed… you all heard her, right?” Yang struggled to keep her anger in check as the other two members of team RWBY stayed silent. Shock and anger were on their faces. Aloy’s eyes were wide as she took in all the information that… Jinn had shown them all. That there had been two Gods, one of Light and one of Darkness who hadn’t just been unprovable and abstract concepts like the Nora’s All-Mother and the Banuk’s Blue Light. They had been as real as the five people in front of her.

They had been all-powerful, but they weren’t all-knowing, and they had been fallible. The only thing that Aloy found herself agreeing with Salem about was that even the Gods weren’t infallible. She had seen that with the Nora and their beliefs. She had seen it with Sylens and the founding of Eclipse. But most importantly, she had seen it with Ted Faro and all the mistakes that had led to the necessity of such projects like Enduring Victory and Zero Dawn.

She heard a snap and saw the older man send Oscar into a tree with a punch before his hand spasmed into a claw and then another fist.

She heard his gruff voice growl before her attention turned to finding a trail because right now survival came before anger and rage. Aloy moved away from the group a little way before she managed to find a trail despite the ground being covered by thick snow.

She heard her unexpected companions start to become anxious and worry mixed with anger entered their voices. “Guys, I found a trail. We need to get a move on. Based on the Sun’s rays it’ll be dark soon, and I doubt any of us wants to be stuck in the cold!

The five turned to her as each processed what she said. Yang’s eyes flared red, and she let out a growl. [I don’t know why you think you-]

Aloy cut her off with a hand. “Enough! I know that don’t have the same ties to this world, and this fight that you do but I do know what it’s like to come from a world that’s died and been reborn! If we don’t move, we die. And I swear upon the Old Ones that I haven’t fought and bled the way I have just to die in the cold in a strange world that’s not my own! Not when I have my own fight to finish!”

Aloy snarled at Yang. Her eyes burned even as she fought off a shiver. “Now, I understand better than most that all of us will need to process this. But right now, we have more important things to worry about.”

The Seeker turned on her heel and started to walk down the trail that she found without even waiting to see if they would follow her.

“She’s right… we can worry about it once we’re out of the cold,” Blake whispered as she handed Oscar Ozpin’s cane.

That stirred everyone else into reluctant action.

As the six of them walked down the trail, Qrow began to slowly push his way forward until he was silently walking next to Aloy. Her five companions’ moods were dour and black as they walked even as the sky itself darkened. Aloy noticed that while everyone else was unaffected she was struggling to hold off the shivers that went through her body as she walked.

Finally, after hours of walking through the snowbound forest, they found where the path ended. The structure was a small one-story house with a smaller storage shed a few footsteps away. Qrow didn’t even spare the room a glance before he entered the bedroom, and they all heard the door slam.

Aloy couldn’t explain why, but this entire place made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and set her on edge. Something about it just felt wrong… unnaturally wrong.

She forced the feeling down but was hoping that it was just her instincts being overactive at her pending first night in a different world. They had never failed her before, yet she knew that they wouldn’t survive a night in the frigid forest.

Yang and Weiss went outside to investigate the shed while Blake and Oscar moved into the kitchen to see if there was anything that could be salvaged as far as food.

“Not exactly comfortable but its out of the elements which is good enough.” Aloy thought to herself as she pulled everything that she thought could be used as bedrolls and piled them on the floor of the main room before she unslung her bow from her back and removed her sling from her hip before establishing a small area in the corner for herself.

The Seeker knew that they were all preoccupied and had things on their minds. Whether because of what they had learned about Salem from the Relic or because they were occupied with thoughts of Ruby. She knew that Yang was Ruby’s sister from what she said in the first moments they knew each other but she wasn’t sure of the relationship the rest of them had with Ruby.

Once the main living area was at least… conducive to living again she turned her attention to making a fire. Aloy went to her bow and pulled out two arrows before going over to the fireplace and visually inspecting the wood.

The fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in some time and it appeared its last pieces of firewood had been halfheartedly scattered in the ashes as it was put out for the night.

“Well, this isn’t usable,” she grumbled as she took the charred pieces out of the hearth and put them to the side.

[Any way I can help?] A soft voice asked as Aloy looked up and saw Blake leaning against the frame where the main room met the kitchen. The black-haired girl’s cat ears were flat against her head.

“We need fresh firewood; do you think you could chop some?” Aloy asked and Blake nodded.

As she started to walk towards the door Yang opened it and looked at the Lamp that rested on Blake’s hip.

[Blake, give me the Relic. I have one more question to ask.] Yang muttered.

[But it’s the last question this century…]

[I’m aware, but I need to know… please...?] Yang almost whimpered as Blake sighed and held the Lamp out.

[Alright... I think I know what you’re going to ask.] Blake said as she handed the Relic over and Aloy’s gaze moved between the two.

“Wait, what are you going to ask?” Aloy asked but Yang waved her off.

[Jinn, I have one final question for you.] Yang whispered as the Lamp floated into the middle of the room.

Once again, blue smoke poured out and the ethereal form of Jinn materialized. [Well, twice in one day for two different questions. What kind of question do you have, Yang Xiao Long?]

[My sister, will I ever see her again?] Yang asked with a very faint hint of nervousness.

Jinn considered the question before nodding lightly.

[Such questions of the future have been asked before and only the future can answer can truly as the events unfold. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an answer for you. You both have long journeys ahead of you that must be completed and they will take some time. The road to returning her to her natural place has not yet been severed, yet the odysseys have just barely begun. Your love and worry for your sister is that of a mother’s, but your heart knows that she will not rest until she is with you again. In the past you have also felt a mother’s pride for your sister so have confidence in her now as you step forward on your own journey. Know that she is alive and well, just as the stranger that stands besides you is. Does that satisfy you?]

Yang nodded slowly and Jinn gave a small smile. [Then with my last question used its time I slumbered.] Jinn faded away as the Lamp fell onto the ground, unusable for another hundred years.

Time resumed as Qrow opened the door. [Well, I found the owner of this place.] He muttered while Blake picked the Lamp up and attached it to her hip.

The owner had died in their sleep and… not been found. The only ones to not turn green were Aloy and Qrow as they moved the corpse outside and into the shed to cremate tomorrow.

Once that macabre business was completed and brief last rights were given, Qrow turned to Aloy. [It’s long past time that you explain yourself. Who are you, where you came from, and what happened to you?]

“That’s fine. let’s get a fire going and I’ll explain,” Aloy whispered and the older Huntsman nodded.

* * *

Ruby had managed to finally find the open sky of the strange and unfamiliar world that she was stuck in. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do while her limbs ached and Crescent Rose felt like a heavy metal weight on her back.

The Huntress hadn’t noticed immediately, probably because of all the stress and adrenaline that been coursing through her but now that she finally had time to breathe, and properly investigate, she had noticed that her entire body felt like she had just gotten hit by a dump truck.

Once she had woken up on her first full day in this world, she had found several pieces of weaponry that she hadn’t noticed before. Other than the spear, she had found a device that attached to her wrist that looked like a slingshot but upon experimentation, she had discovered that it shot wires out of it that could anchor into two points.

Using a few pebbles as tests had yielded interesting results. One of the wire types had flat out blown the pebble apart while the other two caused sparks and flames to fly.

One looked like a giant sack that spat flame out akin to a flamethrower, one shot a high-speed ice spike into the wall before exploding violently and the third shot balls of electricity.

“Well, these weapons are certainly awesome, can’t complain about that at least,” Ruby muttered as she adjusted the bandolier that rested across her chest.  
The pouches that had been put on the table by Aloy now rested either on her hips or around her waist using the sewing skills that she learned from Yang to create loops for them using some of the leather she had found

Since her Dust ammunition was now inert and useless, she had left all of it on the table in favor of the Chillwater, Blaze, Sparker, and Metalburn which was attached to her bandolier where the ammo for Crescent Rose had gone.

She had found a rappelling hook amongst Aloy’s supplies which was put into her backpack and set to the side.

That had just left her with two issues. The first was that the animal skins that Aloy, and then Ruby had been resting on was goatskin stitched on top of boar skin with another layer of goatskin as a blanket.

After giving some thought to the matter, she realized that she could use a part of her cloak to create a short-term solution until a more permanent one could be found. Ruby wrapped the skins together as tightly as she could before she ripped the entire bottom of her cloak off and wrapped it around the furs before tying multiple knots into it.

For now, it would suffice and she would be able to carry it just above where she normally carried Crescent Rose.

Crescent Rose was the other, more sizeable issue. Her limbs and body still felt really heavy and her precious weapon, which she had been able to wield with ease, was now pressing against her back painfully and she was barely able to hold it.

As she forced herself to sit down, trying not to let the pain in her limbs overwhelm her she came to a very painful realization. Not one that was physically painful but was instead emotionally painful.

She realized that she’d probably have to take Crescent Rose apart and repurpose the parts. She didn’t want to do it, she really didn’t, but she could barely lift, much less use it and that was a serious liability.

Ruby knew her High-Caliber Sniper Scythe inside and out so if she was really going to do this, she knew what parts she could repurpose and what would have to be discarded. She knew she could take it apart here but that would just create a whole host of potential issues which would just create a headache for her.

She couldn’t help but start to think of new ideas and ways that she could adapt Aloy’s weapons into a design that combined Crescent Rose with her own.

Once all of Aloy’s supplies and weapons had been comfortably managed and the tension in her body had faded to a dull throb Ruby’s attention turned to the top of the sinkhole that she was at the bottom of.

The city that surrounded her was very reminiscent of Mountain Glenn. Unlike that abandoned city which was gray and sealed away from the world, this one was open to the sky and overgrown greenery pervaded from the buildings which were densely packed.

After stepping back to get a better look she saw that she could slowly work her way upwards and out onto the surface so that was the next thing that she set out to do.

They were her first real steps on her new journey in the new world that she found herself in.

* * *

“And that’s how I ended up here. I believe that you all know the rest of the story from there,” Aloy told them as she finished telling her story.

She had told them everything even as darkness claimed the inside of the cabin while the flickering fire kept it at bay inside. She told them about her childhood with Rost and the training he had given her, the Proving Massacre and the beginning of her journey, her entry into Carja lands and going to Meridian, Meeting Sylens and their hunt for the past, her true origins, her travel through The Cut and her run-in with HEPHAESTUS and CYAN, the Battle of Meridian, and finding Elisabet’s body.

None of the others spoke for a while as they absorbed her story. Yang’s eyes had shifted from lilac to red as her hands curled into fists while Blake, Weiss, and Oscar were lost in their own thoughts. Qrow’s first words had been a soft series of curses before he sat back onto the couch.

[It… just seems… so hard to believe,] Weiss muttered as she stared at Aloy with wide eyes.

[I-I mean… in a way it’s not that dissimilar to the history of Remnant. Both of our worlds died and were reborn.] Blake said softly as she avoided looking at anyone.

Yang tried to form words, but she just ended up making some nonsensical noises before she just sighed and folded her arms.

[I… think it’d be best if we slept on this. I know I’m the youngest but… we all have had a long day.] Oscar finally said as he looked at the group and slowly got nods from each of them.

“I’m going to stay up for a while… if that’s alright. I’m used to not getting much sleep.” Aloy said as she moved a chair by the window and then a second one before unslinging her bow, sitting down, and resting her weapon on her lap while she put her feet up.

As the rest of the group settled down for the night, she turned her attention to the dark, snowbound forest. Her green eyes vigilant in case any Grimm decided to emerge.


	4. Out of the snow and forging a weapon

Getting out of the hole that she had been whammied into had been rather difficult. Ruby had stamina, but her physical strength was still lacking, even after all the training she had done with Qrow and Ozpin. Her hands were now scraped and bruised but at least she was above ground and all the supplies were as well.

According to the video diaries that Aloy left on her device, which was apparently called a Focus, she was in a region called Plainsong which was the home of a tribe called the Utaru. Their main city called Triticum was a four-to-five-day journey from where Ruby currently was.

It didn’t take one of Weiss’ fancy tutors, or a genius to see that bypassing a nearby source of help in favor of a near week-long trek through unfamiliar wilderness for no reason with dwindling supplies would earn her a stern lecture from the Heiress in the future, so for now her destination was a small village perhaps half a day’s walk from where she was now.

Since Crescent Rose was too heavy to be usable for the time being, Ruby’s main weapon in case something decided to attack her was Aloy’s spear. During her initial training with Uncle Qrow, he had started her out on the basics such as the spear. She had even thought about making one until watching her uncle with the weapon that had truly inspired her and the birth of Crescent Rose. It had been a long time since she had put those skills to any practical use.

She was out of her element in more than one way. She’d always had someone to ask for advice if she was in over her head and now for the first time in her life, she was completely and utterly alone. The only ‘person’ that she could rely on for advice was the holographic version of Aloy and that was very limited.

The Huntress remembered that her mirror-self had a bow on her back, and that posed another problem for her. Unlike the spear, she had no real experience using a bow so she’d be learning that completely from scratch. This would be something that she’d be learning from pure trial and error.

Ruby made one last adjustment to the supplies on her back before she set off into the region of Plainsong which was geographically a very flat, open place. There were very few trees that provided shade from the sun, but there was a large abundance of other flora.

There were bushes of various sizes, some of which just had leaves, some had berries, and others still had thorny branches. As Ruby walked past them, she saw small animals like squirrels, raccoons, and even a prairie dog or two run off.

She even saw one or two badgers scurry away as well, but she paid them no mind. She could stock up on food when she got to her destination and ask if they had a forge as well.

Thankfully Ruby didn’t need to worry about a map since the Focus had a three-dimensional, holographic one listed as one of its subfiles. The device seemed like it was Earth’s version of a Scroll. She knew that before the world died and was remade that the devices were very common from what she had learned.

Her trip was pretty uneventful; while she saw herds of machines that she recognized from Aloy’s field notes, they ran off if she got too close to them and didn’t seem to be a threat like the Grimm were, so she left them alone.

When she got to the small community it wasn’t quite what she expected. She was used to how things were on Remnant, where every village had thick stone walls in case the Grimm attacked. The village here didn’t have any such protection and seemed more suited for agriculture for anything, the only barrier consisted of thin pieces of wood and metal which encircled what she guessed was the farm.

She cautiously approached the first villager she saw, a young woman who was maybe around twenty or so. She only knew what Aloy’s video diaries told her, and she was still an outsider to this world. She didn’t want to accidentally offend. “Hello, may I ask you something?”

[Oh, hello, Outlander. What is it you require?] The woman asked, a hint of wariness in her voice. The girl’s accent was a thick drawl and it was very reminiscent of the villages in the southern part of Anima. It took Ruby a couple of moments to wrap her mind around her accent.

From Aloy’s video diaries she knew that the girl was from a clan that lived far to the west, so she had probably heard an accent as well. But she had a feeling that for Aloy the accent wasn’t as thick.

“Does this village happen to have a forge? I have a long journey west ahead, and I could really use it. Any supplies your village can spare would be helpful as well.” Ruby said, and the villager nodded.

[We have a forge; you’d have to ask the forge master for permission to use it. As for the supplies, you need to ask the crop lord; they’re the ones who distribute all foodstuffs.]

“Can you take me to them?” Ruby asked, not wanting to push in case she declined.

There was a long moment of silence before she nodded. [Alright, follow me, Outlander.] Ruby’s guide led her across the hamlet to a small forge.

She frowned internally at seeing how lackluster the forge was, but it was enough to strip Crescent Rose for parts, so it would do.

* * *

Aloy had stayed up for what she guessed was the better part of the night. She was hoping that the survival instinct that was telling her to get away from this place would’ve settled down with how quiet everything was.

She wasn’t that lucky since when she got up her instincts kicked in again and this time, they were telling her to run far away from here.

Aloy had gotten the same feeling in her stomach when she went to go crash the Focus network that the Shadow Carja had made. That had been her first encounter with Hades and that had resulted in her diving off a waterfall into a lake.

She was on edge as she left the cabin early in the morning. The Seeker was hoping that there were some game animals to hunt, berries to pick, or herbs to collect leaving her allies to their own devices.

She didn’t know if they would be able to read the note that she had left them explaining that she had gone out gathering. Aloy didn’t know if their two worlds shared the same written characters, and even if they did, she knew that her handwriting left a lot to be desired.

Regardless of those two things, she had left a note next to Blake before she departed the cabin at sunrise.

Aloy had been taught by Rost at an early age that she couldn’t rely on her Focus for everything so he had made her learn to tell time using the sun, make mental maps in her head, and to find her way home even in deep snows. All of the lessons he had taught her would be more useful than ever since she had left her Focus behind when she came to Remnant.

* * *

Blake woke up not long after Aloy left. She groaned as she opened her eyes. The Cat Faunus hadn’t slept well at all, nightmares had plagued her sleeping hours and she could feel the sweat on her back. As she sat up, she saw a folded piece of paper laying by where she had been laying.

She quietly unfolded the paper and scanned it. The words were very scratchy and unevenly spaced. There were no spaces for some words and odd spaces where there shouldn’t have been for others, but despite all of the technical issues, it was still readable overall.

[Heading outto forage, I’llbe back before dark, Aloy.] Blake looked around the room and saw a book on the chair where Aloy had sat last night.

She softly nudged Yang, Weiss, and Oscar awake. “Guys wake up, Aloy’s already started her day.”

Oscar was the first one to wake up completely with a soft yawn. Then Yang, and Weiss. “Where’d she go? Are we going to have to find her,” Yang asked, slight annoyance in her voice.

Blake handed Oscar the note which he showed to Yang and Weiss. “Well, that’s just great… guess we should go find her.” Yang muttered as she left the cabin. Weiss and Blake looked at each other worriedly before Weiss followed her. “I think I saw a trailer behind the cabin. Do you think you can take a look at it?” Blake asked Oscar before she moved to follow Weiss and Yang.

* * *

The sun was at its zenith when Aloy heard an ear-piercing screech. Her foraging had yielded quite a few different herbs and found sound dead branches for arrow shafts.

She had bent over to pick some medicinal herbs that had been sticking out of the snow before the screech rang out. Her hands went to her bow and one of her arrows. Years of training and instinct kicked in as she stood up and waited to see if the noise happened again.

When it did, she turned to the direction it had come from and began sprinting towards it. If she had to guess, she was a mile and a half away from the cabin which wasn’t that far for her.

She ducked behind a tree as another screech rang out, risking being seen only long enough to see… five Grimm shambling towards Blake, Yang, and Weiss who were all laying in the snow. Their weapons were sheathed so they probably hadn’t been expecting the ambush.

The Grimm were clumped together instead of displaying any kind of tactic whatsoever. They were just focused on the girls.

Blake’s ears twitched and, with some difficulty, turned her head to see Aloy’s green eyes peek out from behind a tree. Blake sent a silent plea in Aloy’s direction with her eyes before the Grimm screamed again.

The Huntresses couldn’t get up, they couldn’t get to their weapons. They were completely at the mercy of the Grimm. Aloy’s eyes widened, if she didn’t do anything the three of them would die, and she couldn’t let that happen.

She took three Blaze arrows from her quiver and let them fly towards the foul creatures. When the arrows connected, the creatures screeched in pain as they were engulfed in flames.

Instead of fleeing like any other creature, they simply turned around and moaned as their eyes moved from side to side. Aloy moved back into cover, but not before one of them made direct eye contact with her but simply looked away.

The young woman didn’t know why they didn’t seem to notice her but she didn’t care. She grabbed two of her Hardpoint Arrows and fired them at the nearest Grimm’s skeletal head, which penetrated and the creature faded away.

The remaining Grimm screeched as they saw one of their own vanish. They didn’t know what was happening as Aloy’s arrows killed another.

Their screeches might not have been very effective on Aloy but they were drawing more and more of them from the woods. Making a quick decision she took two of her Timed Blast Bombs and slung them towards the Grimm who were now thoroughly distracted from their intended prey.

Aloy ran over to Blake and helped her up before each of them grabbed one of the other girls and helped them up as well. The Grimm moaned as they saw their prey getting away but the sequence of timed blasts prevented them from pursuing immediately.

Aloy took off running with the others right on her heels. She didn’t even slow down as she plowed through a snowdrift.

[Oscar!] Blake and Yang both called out as the quartet ran towards the edge of the woods where the cabin was.

The two called out again and Aloy saw Oscar working on a trailer before he looked around.

[Oscar, we have to go now!] Yang yelled as they ran into the small clearing and went to drag Qrow out of the cabin.

A loud screech echoed and Oscar sank to one knee, wincing in pain. Aloy just turned on her heel and fired two more Blaze arrows at the approaching creatures.

She barely noticed Weiss step beside her and the fact that the girl’s sword was glowing with fire. A wave of flame shot from her sword and engulfed the Grimm and the trees alike. [Now we can leave.] Weiss said as she put her hand on Aloy’s arm.

“Right,” Aloy replied as she threw another Timed Blast Bomb before she followed the girl in white.

Once the two scrambled onto the trailer, Yang revved Bumblebee’s motor nervously before she hit the gas. 

The six of them were silent for a long time until Yang slowed her bike with the snow crunching underneath the tires as she brought them to a stop.

[I’m sorry… for what I said… about giving up.] Weiss muttered as she looked at Blake and Yang.

Yang sighed before she turned around. [ Me too… we can’t until the Lamp is safe.]

Blake nodded. [It wasn’t your fault… it was the fault of those… things.]

Aloy wasn’t sure what they were talking about, her attention was Qrow who was sulking like a child.

“Seriously, you have nothing to say?” she asked as she stared at him.

[What do you want from me...?] Qrow asked as he hiccupped and narrowed his eyes.

“You are their mentor and you are letting them down.”

[And how am I doing that? Please do enlighten me.]

“You are supposed to guide them and offer your insight. You failed to do that. Instead, you behaved like a petulant child.”

[You have no idea what you’re talking about.]

Aloy opened her mouth to say something but Yang cut in. [This isn’t the time or the place for such a conversation.]

The Seeker acquiesced to Yang’s point and nodded. “Very well, for now, I think that this time would be better spent with me learning more about this world. You all know about my world, yet I know next to nothing about this one.”

[I understand that we were dealing with the Grimm. And the lamp. And all the history and more Grimm- anyway, as understandable as it may have been, leaving you in the dark about Remnant was still an oversight on our part. So, go on. Ask anything you wish,] Weiss said with a weary smile.

* * *

Ruby had made an agreement with the forge master. He had let her use the forge for as long as she needed as long as she left behind any spare parts that weren’t needed for the construction of her modified spear and her bow.

The Focus told her that there was both a Master Override as well as an overriding component on the spear itself. The overriding component was on the butt of the spear while the Master Override was installed just below the spearhead.

According to the information Ruby had from Aloy, the Master Override would allow the Huntress to purge the remaining Subordinate Functions of GAIA if they were hostile. The overriding component would allow Ruby to turn machines into temporary allies and certain machines into long-term mounts for quicker travel.

She took the spear apart first to see what components she could use. She wanted to keep both Overrides so set them aside in their own area of her workstation.

Hours passed as she methodically took apart Aloy’s weapons and laid the parts out in front of her. She removed all of the finer mechanical pieces, especially those that made the weapons work, and put them in the same pile that she did with the Overrides.

Once she had taken the weapons apart and determined which mechanisms were usable and which were not, she turned her attention to Crescent Rose and extended it into scythe form.

She knew every detail of her beloved weapon like the back of her hand, so this would take far less time. Crescent Rose’s snath, or handle, and all of the blades that she had added to the weapon increased the High-Caliber Sniper Scythe’s weight significantly.

The pommel of Crescent Rose had a small point that could function as an additional spearhead. As she worked, Ruby realized that the design that she was making would function more like a naginata. Her design called for the blade going from a concave, or inwardly face blade, to a convex blade, which curved outward from the center.

She hoped that she would be able to add everything that her design called for. She wasn’t sure how she’d add the parts from Aloy’s weapons into the new one she was making but she’d figure that out.

Ruby started to bite her lip and hum when she felt a tap on her shoulder. The Huntress turned to see the girl who led her to the forge.

[Food, you’ve been working for hours.] She held out some bread and an ear of corn.

“Thank you, I’m Ruby if you’re curious.” Ruby accepted the food and slowly bit into the bread.

[I’m Dewi… may I inquire something?]

“Go ahead.”

[You are dressed very strangely… do all tribe members dress as strangely as you…?]

“My… tribe lives very far away from here.”

[In the west? What a long way to travel then.]

“You have no idea.”


End file.
